Looking at the broad gesture of Duren's work, one sees the landscape image clearly dominating the view, whether it be a view of nature unadulterated nature agriculturalized, or nature as seen and felt from within our interior spaces. But these paintings do not necessarily depict nature according to expectation. They are deliberate objects/images that are ordered in a particular way for a reason. And like the variable view from the highway, the constructed visual experience in these paintings is quite enjoyable.

Every image contains a variety of stimuli, from repetitive line patterns and textures to fields of glowing colors whose combinations would seem to contradict if it were not for the decisiveness in which they were put in place. Duren ballets in pictorial space, leaving the ground for an aerial view, and then careening into solid flatness as if it were a gravitational law. These daring formal constructions incite an active, difficult, and lively viewing.